Sarah Zettel - Reclamation

But there were other people in the clan, and who knew what the Skymen and the Teachers had done before the clan had moved out here?

Who knew what they’d done to her children. To her hus…to Nail in the Beam. Iron Keeper didn’t seem sad or upset, which meant…she laid her hand across her pouch. It meant no one might know yet about Trail.

She stopped herself from asking him to hurry it along.

Iron Keeper kept stealing glances at Eric, who stood in the middle of the raft with his hands shoved firmly into his pockets.

“Stop staring, Nephew,” Aria said lightly. “He’s not going to fly away with you watching him.”

Iron Keeper blushed. “Iron didn’t mean…he meant, I, umm…No disrespect, Sar Born.”

Eric nodded gravely. “None seen, Young Man. None seen.”

Garismit’s Eyes, he’s remembered two or three of his manners anyway.

They drifted through groves of Crookers and Droopers and straight-backed evergreens until finally they came out into a channel that had been chopped clear of reeds and saplings. Cabins on supports of bamboo poles squatted above the channel, and everywhere were faces she knew.

“Oy-ai!” called Iron Keeper. “Father!”

Iron Shaper, the smith and clay-baker and the most important man in the clan looked up from his makeshift hearth. Aria raised her hands so he could see her marks. Here was the test. If Iron Shaper didn’t even welcome her…

“Sister!” he bellowed, dropping his tongs into the coals and leaping to his feet.

Aria was on the shore almost before Keeper brought the raft to a halt. Her brother-in-law gathered her up into his ropy smith’s arms and swung her around. “Knew you’d be back! Told the wife, I did. Knew it!”

The world was full of voices, friendly slaps, and her name. Stone in the Wall. Stone in the Wall! Aria. Auntie. Little sister. Hands to clasp, and faces, and laughter. Home, all of it home.

She barely even noticed the ones who stayed in the shadows and the doorways and just watched her.

Then came the special name.

“Mother!”

Aria spun and all at once her arms were full of children. Storm Water, big and burly as an ox for his age, like his father. Roof Beam, wiry little bundle, and tough Hill Shadow and beautiful, beautiful Aienai-Arla. Little Eye. The daughter she’d been afraid she’d never bear, stood strong and solid on her little round legs.

“My own!” She kissed them and hugged them over and over. “Oh, my own! My own!”

“Stone in the Wall.”

Aria looked up and knew what she’d see.

Nail in the Beam. Nameless Powers preserve me. Aria swallowed. So many memories came with seeing his square face and thick, work-toughened body. They’d grown up side by side. There’d been no surprise at all when her parents had marched her to the Temple to meet him and his parents there. He’d built their house, she’d built their stove and laid out their mats. They’d fought over this thing and that, when she’d been home. They’d even blackened each other’s eyes, but he’d cradled her head through seven births and listened in silence when she told him what truth she knew about the namestones. He’d had other women, and she’d had other men, but the children had all been his, no matter what the Teacher had said.

“You said you might not be back.” His voice hadn’t changed. It grumbled like thunder in the distance.

“I was wrong. Nothing new in that, you’d say, I know.”

“If you weren’t always speaking for me, I would.”

They stared at each other. Aria found her throat had closed up tight.

Her silence made Nail shift his weight. “Your place is elsewhere than my home. Your blood will be no more part of mine.”

The words of divorce and disinheritance.

“It’s better this way.” She said it. She knew it was true, but for a long, aching moment, she wished it wasn’t.

“These are my wife’s children,” he said.

Oh, no. It’s only been six months…" Who?” she croaked.

“Branch in the River.”

Of course. She bowed her head. After her family and the smith’s, Branch was the loudest voice in the village. Nail wasn’t one to give up rank if he could help it.

“No!” howled Little Eye, clutching Aria’s pant leg. “Mother!”

No! Aria wanted to howl, too. These are mine! But Nail had stayed while she had gone. She had broken the law, been cursed by the Teachers, committed heresy, oh, her list of crimes was a long one. She had lost the right to her children before she had even gone over the World’s Wall.

Better this way. There was still so much to do. She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t be their mother. Couldn’t ever be. She’d known that when she left. Known that for a long time.

“Come home, children,” said Nail. His voice didn’t change. It was level and grumbling, like nothing was ever quite good enough. Nameless Powers, how that endless discontented note had driven her so crazy, even after she’d learned to read it like the signs in the weather.

She could read it now. What he really meant to say was that he also wished it wasn’t better this way.

“No!” wailed Little Eye.

“Shush.” Aria laid a hand on her daughter’s…Branch’s daughter’s shoulder. “Your father is right,” she said. “Go home now, all of you, or do you want to look like a bunch of disobedient oxen in front of everybody? Go on.”

One by one, they left her side, and the comfort of coming home left with them. Storm Water kept his steady gaze on her the whole time while he scooped Little Eye into his arms easily. Nail put his back to her and marshaled them all through the houses and the weeds until she couldn’t see them anymore.

“Everyone knows whose children they are,” said Shaper at her side.

“They are Nail in the Beam’s and Branch in the River’s,” she answered him. “Which house is my mother’s, Shaper? She’s sure to have heard the ruckus.”

“She’s with Cups and Torch.” He pointed toward one of the cabins farther up the rise.

“You’ll want to see her alone.” Eric’s voice almost jumped her out of her skin. She’d forgotten he was there at all.

“Shaper, this is Eric Born. Eric to you. He’s a Skyman and I’m vouchsafing him. Give him a spot by the fire, will you?” She spread her hands and her voice wobbled. “I’ve got nowhere to welcome him to.”

“You’re welcome, Skyman, in my sister’s name, my wife’s, and mine.” Shaper held out his hand. Eric stared at the scars for a moment and then shook it. Shaper glanced at Eric’s gloves, and then at Aria.

“He’s embarrassed, Shaper. Skymen have no hand marks, and he think’s it’ll wound his dignity if everyone sees him naked as a baby.” She was tired, something inside her ached horribly, and she still had to face Mother. “Just take care of him, will you?”

She pressed through the bamboo until the cabin came into sight. It was no different from the others with its wicker walls, thatch roof, clay chinking, and bamboo legs. In the doorway hunched her mother, Eyes Above the Walls. She was wrinkled, mostly blind, and bent in as many different ways as a Crooker tree. She could barely walk without help. The joke among the clan was that the Nameless Powers had forgotten her name and couldn’t call her away to die, so she just lived on.

“Hello, Mother.” Aria crouched down beside the stoop.

“Thought I heard your voice,” Eyes Above said. Her own voice creaked like tree branches in the wind. “Well?”

“I…well, what, Mother?”

“Are they still with you?” she said impatiently.

“Yes.” I should have known.

Eyes Above leaned forward eagerly. “And still answer you? Still alive in your hands, are they?”